[ad_1]
At a recent conference that I attended, a speaker asked everyone in the room to raise their hand if they had suffered mental health problems or if one of their loved ones was suffering from it. .
Not surprisingly, literally everyone in the room stood up almost immediately.
The Midwest Business Group on Health is hosting an annual conference in Chicago on health benefits in early May. This year, many speakers focused on mental health. This is appropriate because May is the month of mental health awareness. I'm also working on a feature for the hand of workThe September / October issue on mental health benefits. Hearing people in the healthcare industry talking about this topic is extremely helpful.
Many of us in the HR sector have heard the usual numbers on the number of people with mental health issues each year and the cost to businesses. But one speaker advised us to look beyond numbers. Mental health statistics are not just data. Do not just think about numbers; think of the people behind the numbers, said Jennifer Posa Flynn, Director of Quality Health Care, Neuroscience and Infectious Diseases at Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems.
It was easy for everyone in the room who raised our hands quickly and, I guess, many of you who are reading this right now.
Flynn also encouraged participants (mainly employers and some providers) to consider mental health as part of their social responsibility strategy. I love this idea! I would like to point out in any article that the quality of mental health benefits in a health plan is essential, but it is not more damaging to consider mental health in a more holistic way, as in the context of CSR.
We did not discuss this topic too much at the conference, but I imagine that mental health and CSR are closely linked. Employees could volunteer at community organizations that support mental health. Employers could also examine the impact of their policies, benefits and culture on the mental health of their employees as a key element in the overall goals of their business. Fundamentally, employers could be mindful of the mental health of employees and employers and employees could be alert to the mental health problems of society in their communities.
Cheryl Potts, executive director of the Kennedy Forum, also made some interesting remarks about mental health. This Chicago-based advocacy group is also involved in its local community, which is a good example of CSR.
Although Illinois has the most stringent health and health parity law in the country, there are still many cases of discriminatory health regimes for people with mental illness, she declared. For example, insurance companies that refuse claims based on their own criteria of medical necessity rather than the actual needs of the patient.
For example, in March, UnitedHealthcare lost a lawsuit on this issue. The clbad action was brought on behalf of more than 50,000 people to whom the insurance company refused coverage.
"Discrimination is inherent in the way we pay for services in our country," said Potts.
Henry Harbin, a psychiatrist with more than 30 years of experience in the field of behavioral health, gave a good overview of what employers are doing to address mental health issues and for which improvements are still being made. possible.
People are generally more comfortable talking openly about mental health and employers have generally done a good job of mental health in the workplace, culturally, he said. But many have done little to try to change Mental Health provision of care. This is a good area to focus on, he advised. He also pointed to the troubling fact that mortality rates are rising in areas such as suicide and substance abuse at the same time, where more spending is being spent on earlier behavioral conditions.
I will deepen his suggestions for employers in the next issue of the hand of work. For the moment, his main thrust was the importance for employers to know what their third-party administrators are doing with behavioral health care and using their influence to change harmful practices. Employers can obtain key behavior data from their third-party administrators, such as reimbursement rates, off-grid usage, and refusal rates.
<! –
[ad_2]
Source link
